


Fallout

by GenitalGrievous



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Daniel has a Dirty Mouth, Death, Jealousy, M/M, Meridian, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-26 02:15:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1671002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenitalGrievous/pseuds/GenitalGrievous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's barely made it through life this time, but it was danger that kept their love alive. What happens when the wrong one dies?</p><p>Spoilers for Meridian through Abyss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dangerous

**Author's Note:**

> Some liberties are taken with dialogue and locations.

"Hello. I'm Jonas Quinn." The blonde held his hand out and Daniel took it tentatively, his heart beating stiffly. SG-1 had made contact with a huge amount of races and groups of humans, and Daniel had seem some beautiful specimens of his species, but few made him feel as twitter-pated and tongue-tied as the young scientist before him. 

"I'm--I'm Daniel Jackson." His felt felt hot and he worried that he was blushing stupidly. "It's nice--Nice to meet you." As their hands separated Daniel was aware of the moisture of his own palm, and worried that Jonas had noticed the sweat, and hoped he wasn't disgusted by Daniel's awkward behaviour. 

\---

A dark sweat stain was visible running down Daniel's spine, about two inches wide. His shoulders were quivering slightly, a sign he was either excited or anxious. Or both, there was rarely a delineation between the two when it came to Daniel Jackson. Jack rolled his eyes, tightening his grip on the beretta in his drop-leg holster as subtly as possible. Scientists, historians, archeologists, he wanted to spend as little time as possible on this planet. Get the BFSG--Big Fucking Space Gun--and get the hell out of dodge. Carter and Daniel both promised that there would be technology worth it, but right from the get-go he could tell that he was going to have to sit through a lot of huge Carter words and watch Daniel cavort with the local eye-candy before he could get out of here.

At least this time the local delicacy was easier on the eyes than some of the scientists Daniel ran off with, but it didn't ease the grating dissatisfaction Jack had with the entire situation. Wiping his hands on his BDUs Daniel leaned in close to listen to something Jonas was saying quietly. 

"Sir." Carter interrupted his teeth-grating, "I want to see the reactor they're building--"

"Great. Love to. Count me in." He muttered brusquely, anything to get away from Daniel "Interplanetary Flirt" Jackson. 

"Oh." Carter looked awkwardly at the scientist she had been talking to. "Okay. Great."

\---

"Tomis is going to give a tour of our facilities to your comrades," Jonas was smiling, his bright white teeth visible with each word. "But perhaps I could interest you in some artifacts of our history?"

"Oh, please!" Daniel felt a flurry of excitement. Of course the science, the potential for weapons, this Naquadria, was why they had come to Kelowna, but any excuse to get away from another presentation full of words that left him in the dust. How many languages could he speak and he still couldn't wrap his head around Sam's interests half the time. You'd think eventually he would be able to understand, but he knew he was nothing more than a surplus brain on this trip, and barely that.

"My office is this way--" Jonas directed him down a stark hallway and Daniel watched Sam, Jack, and Teal'c disappear with the scientist Jonas had called Tomis. Jack had seemed--well, Jack to be fair. Impatient, crotchety, attributes that normally just came with the man, but they had seemed somehow more pronounced since they arrived on Langara.

The whole compound felt surprisingly more militaristic than Cheyenne Mountain, when they first arrived Daniel had been worried that there would be nothing for him here, that it would all be military and weapons and reactors and technobabble. But meeting Jonas was the light at the end of a very boring tunnel, here was an intelligent and worldly scientist who could also speak Daniel's language. And, in all fairness, everything that came out of his mouth seemed interesting, given his attractiveness. Daniel smiled to himself, Jonas seemed like a worthwhile distraction from the emotional climate of the SGC lately.

With a graceful gesture of his hands Jonas stood outside of a grey metal door, ushering Daniel into his office. Daniel had expected to find Jonas' office to be as spartan as the rest of the base, choosing to assume that it was an aesthetic preferred by all of the people of Kelowna, and was surprised to find the room crowded with books, scrolls, tablets, and various antiquities. It was reminiscent of Daniel's own office, and made him feel instantly comfortable, stilling even his still thumping heart. 

\---

Carter's talking, and everything she's saying is a blur of lengthy words and gesticulating hands. She and Tomis have hit it off, and they're heatedly discussing the potential of Naquadria, or at least that's where their conversation had begun. Jack honestly had no idea if that was still the topic, or a topic, or if that was anywhere close to what they were talking about now. 

Running his hand along the nylon band that held his P-90 around his neck, Jack glanced sideways at Teal'c. His face was expressionless as he started straight ahead, not even noticing as Jack raised one eyebrow. If he didn't know better he'd assume that Teal'c was practicing Kel-no-reem while standing. But Teal'c wouldn't do that, right? 

Fuck.

He might.

Jack tried not to sigh, and returned his attention to Carter and Tomis, and the large glass window that separated the viewing station they were at from the laboratory where several scientists were surrounding the reactor, hands flying in various directions hard at work. At least Daniel was probably having a good time with Doctor Prettyboy, or whatever the hell that kid's name had been. 

He flexed his knees, bending them slightly, hyperextending them, bending again. Slyly looking at Teal'c again, Jack wished that he could practice Kel-no-reem, or at least knew how to sleep standing. His mind wandered back to Daniel, shoulders shaking, rubbing his palms repeatedly on his BDUs and leaving little sweat-streaks on the green fabric, and he smiled involuntarily. Danny had had a hell of a time the last couple of years, Jack had been trying to look out for him but knew he was doing a less than stellar job. On nearly every world Daniel flirted clumsily with locals, as though desperately trying to fill the hole that Sha're had left behind. Jack waited patiently, or as patiently as he possibly could. Danny was healing, his desperate flirtations only solidified that thought in Jack's mind, and when we was done, when he was healed, Jack would be there. Jack would make him whole. Though the efforts were wearing on Jack, watching Daniel flirt and fuck every pretty boy or girl they came across was aggravating to the extreme, knowing that Daniel was able to escape his indiscretions without any consequences on the grounds that he was a civilian. He knew that he let his jealousy get the better of him, knew that he was snapping more at Daniel than usual, and tried to keep his temper under control. But dammit, how could Daniel not notice, he might as well be wearing a neon sign over his head, "better fuck over here." 

Jack sneered at his introspection, inadvertently catching Carter's attention. She tilted her head to the side and gave him a pointed look, without breaking her dialogue with Tomis.

\---

"--An artifact of a time before the current borders between Kelowna and Tirania." Jonas' smile was infectious, they were standing side-by-side poring over an ancient tablet with their elbows touching gently. 

"How long has the relationship between your nations been so--strained?" Daniel asked tentatively. 

"Years, years and years. Since long before I was born." Jonas shrugged. Daniel couldn't imagine growing up on a planet so torn by war, it was beyond even the grimmest times in Earth's history. 

"But once the nations weren't divided?"

"Ye-es." Jonas said slowly, his eyes darting to the door. "There are artifacts and documents dating back to that time, like this one, but--well--"

"--They're not addressed." Daniel finished for him and Jonas nodded, relieved. 

Looking at the tablet, Daniel was overwhelmed with sadness. He was, of course, used to travelling to distant worlds in search of weapon and defense technology, but this time he felt that the world producing it was about to make a huge mistake. The Kelownans hadn't said as much, but Daniel could tell the purpose behind developing the Naquadria bomb. Bombs of this scale, of course, had only one purpose: to cause as much collateral damage as possible. Earth's own history could attest to it, politicians and historians could say what they will about the defensive properties of creating such a weapon of mass destruction, but when it came down to it they had one purpose, and it was in the title: mass destruction. He felt caught between trying to guide Jonas to pacifism and just trying to bed him. It was part moral dilemma and part libido. Even Daniel questioned his right to tell the Kelownans that their philosophy was wrong, he didn't know the people of Tirania and the Andari Federation, maybe they were the monsters the Kelownans had painted them into. 

"Earth--" Daniel cleared his throat, "--you know we have thousands of countries on our planet." Jonas was listening, his pale eyes meeting Daniel's, "We made something like the Naquadria Bomb ourselves."

"I thought your people didn't have access to anything like Naquadria--"

"--Well, it was different. Not quite the same scale but--But it did damage. My country used the atom bomb to end a war." Daniel tightened his jaw. 

"Did the war end?" Jonas asked, his voice quiet but direct.

"Yes. It ended. But at a huge cost." Daniel kept his eyes on the tablet. "They say around 200,000 people died at the time the bombs were dropped, but it actuality it was probably a much higher number. And there was--significant--permanent damage to the land. People continued to die for decades after the explosions from radiation poisoning and leukemia."

"But the war ended." Jonas' voice was firm.

"Yes." Daniel said, wanting to give up, knowing that he was close. "But most of those lives were not soldiers, or politicians, or anyone related to the war. They were civilians. Women and children, families."

"But was their sacrifice not for the greater good of the world?" 

"I guess we might never know." Daniel's eyebrows were scrunched tightly. "But it is still a point of contention throughout the world today."

"And yet you and your people are here today seeking the naquadria bomb. If the damage was so costly, wouldn't you have learned your lesson by now?"

"We--We don't want the bomb." _At least I don't think so..._ Daniel worried. He didn't always know what Jack was thinking. "We think we could use the Naquadria for defense."

"Like a bomb."

"No, like something else--Like--" Daniel felt flustered. "Well, it's Sam's thing. She knows what she's doing."

"You're not being very convincing, Daniel." Jonas said, his voice was soft and warm. He was challenging Daniel, but there was no anger behind the challenge, only scientific curiosity.

Daniel chuckled. "How would you feel if the roles were reversed? What if--If Tirania had the Naquadria bomb. If the war ended, would it be worth losing a million Kelownan lives?"

"If Tirania had the bomb they wouldn't hesitate to use it, you know." Jonas countered. 

Daniel felt weak and a little sad. "Do you know for sure?"

\---

The reflection that looked back at Jack in the bathroom mirror was haggard, unkempt. He squinted, running his fingers through his salt and pepper hair, trying to straighten it. His age showed, no matter how much he tried to take care of himself he knew there was no mistaking the grey hair and wrinkled skin. He liked to think he looked dignified, that's what Sarah had always said, his masculinity polished and prominent. But stress had begun to show through the cracks, his lifestyle was beginning to wear on him. When he was younger being a flyboy had been this exciting adventure, the danger was part of what made his life worthwhile. As he aged, however, the danger became more prominent in his mind, took over his thoughts from time to time. Sure he didn't fly so much anymore, but every day was dangerous. Every day, every trip offworld could be his last one. He wondered, looking at his own brown eyes, reddened around the edges with lack of sleep, what he would regret if he were to die now. There was an awful lot in his life worth regretting, of course. Actions taken and wishes never acted upon.

\---

Dinner had been strained, SG-1 had sat with several prominent Kelownan dignitaries and made small talk. Too small talk, really, minuscule even. It had felt ridiculous to talk about weather and fashions and sports when they were entering the negotiations they were preparing for on the following day. After having talked about the destructive power of the Naquadria bomb candidly with Jonas earlier in the day Daniel had felt agitated through the entire meal, beginning to hate the Kelownan people, wanting to demand that they leave and find some other source of Naquadria. All the while knowing that it was impossible, that Carter would never leave, that Jack would never allow it. And so he had sat, seething, picking at his food delicately and wondering what Jonas was doing while they "enjoyed their meal."

The members of SG-1 were at least provided with their own rooms, though they were almost prison-like with the spartan amenities provided. An uncomfortable cot complete with thin pillow and a blanket made from what appeared to be coarse felt along with a sink and mirror in the room. Daniel was sitting in the middle of the cot, having realized that it didn't provide the stability for sitting on the edge. He was angry, angrier than he had been about any previous transaction that SG-1 had bargained for. Disgusted that Sam and Jack couldn't see it too. And sad, worried that we wouldn't have enough time to at least convince Jonas to think twice about his country's intentions. 

Someone knocked gently on the door, so quietly Daniel was uncertain if he had actually heard it. He stood up and opened the door to find Jonas on the other side, one hand holding his opposite elbow, looking bashful.

"Jonas." Daniel said simply. 

"I--" Jonas' face was red, his voice tight.

"Come in." Daniel stepped aside from the open door.

Jonas shut the door as he entered the room, standing between Daniel and the exit. Uneasily, Daniel took a step away from Jonas. "What's wrong?"

"Daniel, I just--I want--" Jonas closed the distance between them, pulling Daniel against his body sharply, and kissing him on the lips. It was a frantic kiss, desperate, and Daniel returned it willingly, opening his mouth to Jonas' exploring tongue. He ran his hands down Jonas' back clutching at his shirt, digging his fingertips into Jonas' firm muscles. Jonas' hands were warm as they snaked under Daniel's t-shirt, palming up his ribcage, gripping his torso at either side to pull him in closer. 

They broke for air, Daniel touched Jonas' face gently, cupping his cheek in one palm, and studied the younger man's eyes. Pulling gently, he lead Jonas to the uncomfortable cot, pushing him onto it, and climbing on top of him carefully, their lips locked tightly. Rarely Daniel pursued men offworld, it was hard to guess how other cultures felt about homosexuality and it varied hugely from planet to planet. It was a dangerous game, but possibly not more dangerous than anything else they did. Tugging at Jonas's shirt, Daniel pulled it over his head and revealed a well-toned hairless chest. He ran his hands over the tight skin, feeling Jonas' erection pushing into his thigh, pressing small wet kisses along Jonas' neck and clavicle. Insistently Jonas tugged Daniel's shirt off and they pressed their bodies together, warm skin on skin, Daniel moaning into Jonas' mouth, the heady arousal taking over his brain.

"God, Jonas." Daniel moaned, tugging at the closure of his pants, fumbling with the unfamiliar buttons until Jonas reached down and undid them himself, revealing his stiff thick cock. He took it into his mouth without hesitation, moaning around it, his own hips thrusting helplessly against Jonas' legs. With Jonas' prick in his mouth to the base, Daniel cupped his balls, running his thumb across them delicately while rubbing his tongue in hasty circles against the shaft that filled his mouth. 

"Unf--" Jonas groaned, thrusting into Daniel's mouth, clutching two fistfuls of brunette hair in his hands, Daniel's whole world narrowing to the sensations of the dick in his mouth, of the warm body pressed against his. His heart pounded wildly, his head ached as his oxygen became limited. He lifted his head off of Jonas and looked him in the face. He was beautiful, pink lips wide open, tears streaming down his cheeks, hair pasted to his forehead with sweat. Daniel felt his cock give a firm leap and leaned back to hurriedly unbutton his BDUs, fingers shaking. 

With delicate movements Jonas took Daniel's prick into his hands, running his fingers along the sides and over the tip, one hand reaching down to massage his balls, his ministrations careful and almost timid. Daniel moaned, leaning down to kiss Jonas deeply, their tongues tangling, nibbling at each other's lips. 

"I want you to put this inside me." Jonas whispered against Daniel's lips, his breath hot as his hands continued to play with Daniel's dick. 

"Do you have lubrication?" Daniel kissed along Jonas' jaw, his cock painfully hard.

"In my pants--In the pocket--" Daniel pulled Jonas' pants onto the bed from where they had fallen on the floor, feeling along until he came across a small hard object through the fabric. He found the opening to the pocket and extracted a small phial. So, Jonas came prepared. It didn't necessarily mean homosexuality was widespread or even accepted in Kelowna, but it at least spoke to Jonas' openmindedness. 

Deftly, Jonas took the phial from Daniel's hand and quickly uncorked it, pouring the clear liquid inside over his hand before returning it to Daniel's prick. His slick hand gripped Daniel's dick, rubbing the liquid across it, bringing Daniel nearly to the brink of arousal. "Now--" Jonas groaned, his voice hoarse, as he spread his legs and led Daniel by the cock to his waiting ass. "Fuck me, Daniel."

Tight, Jonas was so fucking tight, _virginally_ tight. Daniel would have worried about taking his virginity if it weren't for the look of complete bliss on his face--no virgin feels like that on their first time. Pushing in slowly Daniel kissed Jonas bruisingly hard, delighting in the way the younger man moaned into his mouth when he was buried to the hilt. He pulled out, so that only the tip of his cock was still encased in Jonas' warmth and pushed in again hard, angling his thrust to hit Jonas' prostate and repeated. Jonas' fists clenched and unclenched against Daniel's sides, his mouth wide open and eliciting tiny gasps and moans, clearly struggling to keep from being loud enough to draw attention to Daniel's room. "God you're fucking hot, you know that."

\---

Scowling, Jack pulled his cot across the tiny dormitory, and pushed it against the opposite wall. He lay down again to resume staring at the ceiling and strained his ears. Good, he could only hear it when his bed was against the adjoining wall of Daniel's room. He knew Daniel had taken lovers, fuck Daniel had all but told him he was fucking around offworld, but he had never been--privy--to the details of Daniel's lovemaking. He had been able to differentiate the sounds the two men made, small high-pitched gasps from Jonas, and deeper moans from Daniel. And swear words, he had never heard Daniel's gentle baritone saying words like "fuck" and "ass so tight" but there it was, and it was the worst. The absolute worst. He was sure they were _trying_ to be quiet, the noises seemed more involuntary than your standard noisy fucking, but laying what had to be inches away from Daniel's bed with only the wall between them had made the whole experience too loud.

They had quieted down now, though. At least it didn't seem like they were going for a marathon fuck, Jack wasn't sure how long he would have lasted before he barged in to Daniel's room and--What? Told them to quiet down, probably. Jack sighed and closed his eyes, pressing his palms to his face. It was going to be a long night.

\---

Slick with sweat, legs tangled, and post-coital, Daniel held Jonas in his arms, smoothing his hands up and down Jonas' damp shoulders. Jonas' head was gently tucked under Daniel's chin, his breath moist against his sternum. 

"You're going to leave tomorrow." Jonas said simply, his timbre neutral.

"I am." Daniel whispered.

"Whether you get what you want or not." Jonas' hands were splayed across Daniel's stomach, one on either side of his belly button.

"Yes." Daniel's eyes were closed, he didn't have any emotions in particular to offer Jonas. He didn't regret sleeping with him, or enjoying his company, even knowing that there was no way they could stay together. He preferred it that way, he didn't want to become tangled up in an emotional experience, he only wanted to share bodies. If it would heal him or not he had yet to decide, but it numbed the pain he had felt since Sha're's death. "Jack is not a patient man."

"Tell me about Colonel O'Neill." 

Jonas' request surprised Daniel. He had enjoyed and hated many different kinds of post-coital conversation, but this was the strangest instance by far. "He's our leader."

"Of SG-1?"

"Yes." Daniel ran his hand along Jonas' ribcage, feeling each bone individually. "And a good leader, most of the time."

"Not this time, though." Jonas whispered, his thumbs playing with the thin hairs beneath Daniel's belly button. "You're mad at him."

"Why do you think that?" Jonas was good, he wasn't just intelligent and a quick learner when it came to science and history, that much was becoming clear to Daniel. He was a quick and accurate judge of character.

Shifting his hands to Daniel's back, Jonas pulled their bodies closer tightly. "Because of the Naquadria bomb, because of how you feel about our war, because he doesn't care, because he just wants to get what he wants and leave and because--you still love him."

Stilling his hands, Daniel concentrated on his heartbeat, trying to ensure he wouldn't give any information away inadvertently. "What makes you say that?"

"It's obvious." Jonas chuckled a little, "You flaunt your flirtations in front of him, you only really flirted with me when he was there to see it. Like you were daring him to say something, daring him to notice, daring him to do something about it."

"Am I that transparent?" Daniel smiled crookedly. Jonas had him pinned.

"No," Jonas hesitated. "It wasn't until I saw Colonel O'Neill's reaction that I figured it out."

"How-how did--What was his reaction?" And Daniel immediately lost all of his carefully build post-coital coolness. 

"He's just as mad as you are."

\---

The dormitory looked exactly the same as Jack opened his eyes. He glanced at his watch and judged that, yes, he had managed to sleep through the night. A relief, the struggle to find sleep almost felt like it had been a dream. Rising slowly, Jack brushed off his BDU bottoms and assessed the contents of the dormitory. He had fallen asleep fully clothed and his backpack was where he had left it propped against the door. It wasn't that he didn't trust the Kelownans, it was just that he wanted to know the second someone tried to sneak into his room. Because he didn't trust the Kelownans.

\---

When Daniel woke up he was alone, Jonas had snuck off in the middle of the night, worrying that his presence in Daniel's dormitory would be noticed. "I don't want our relationship to be misconstrued." He had said, with a sweet smile. Daniel _almost_ regretted it this time, Jonas was a good kid. Brainwashed by patriotism to a corrupt country sure, but he had a good heart. He almost wished he could have spent a little more time with him, if only to urge him a little more towards pacifism. 

Washing his face in the sink, Daniel studied his reflection in the mirror, tilting his head to the right and the left and ensuring that there were no visible signs of his lovemaking with Jonas. Satisfied, he dried his face on a coarse towel hanging by the sink and efficiently redressed into his BDUs. 

\---

The group reconvened outside of the military facility, Carter and Jack preparing for a tour of the city. They had announced the night before that they were planning on leaving this evening, with or without what they came for. It was an old tactic, meant to heat up negotiations, but Jack wasn't totally certain it was working on the Kelownans. Daniel had managed to skirt the negotiations entirely, instead receiving the same tour that the rest of SG-1 had _enjoyed_ the day before, this time with Jonas. 

Jack pushed Daniel to the back of his mind. This was his job, Carter had done her work understanding everything, it was Jack's job to make sure he secured it for Earth. He tried to forget the way Daniel smiled as he talked to Jonas, the way they looked even more like co-conspirators since last night, the way he followed Jonas around like an obedient puppy. Maliciously, Jack hoped that his tour of the laboratories was a thousand times more boring than his own had been. He hoped that would teach him a lesson about running off with the local eye-candy _again_.

\---

It happened fast.

First the explosion.

Daniel and Jonas had been talking about naquadria, or something trivial, he couldn't even remember anymore. It didn't matter. The scientists were incapacitated, those who weren't had fled. Jonas was frozen in fear. The next thing he knew Daniel was jumping through the glass, flying into the laboratory in a rain of transparent shards, if Jonas couldn't do anything, if this whole country was made of cowards, Daniel would show them how Earthmen did things. How SG-1 did it.

He hadn't thought it through, of course.

He was going to die.

Well, there was no way he could have. Thought it through.

It happened fast.

The room was hot, Daniel's stomach cramped, his head ached. He tried to wrap his sleeve around his hand, knowing that even without touching the reactor itself he was still absorbing a huge amount of radiation. Everything was happening in a blur, he couldn't remember how he got down here. He thought he had jumped. He looked up at Jonas, and their eyes met, and he knew he had done it.

He had screwed up big. Screwed up _intentionally_.

It happened so fucking fast.

But he had screwed up, in a big way. Beyond a "Daniel when will you learn not to touch everything" kind of way. 

He had saved Kelowna, but he was reasonably certain that wasn't necessarily a good thing. He looked at his hand, felt searing pain.

Yeah, he screwed up. It was done, now.

Jonas was looking down at him from the shattered observation window. Daniel blinked, trying to center his thoughts.

\---

"Negotiations are _over_!" Jack growled, storming towards the Stargate at the head of SG-1, Daniel just behind him. 

The Kelownans were trying to stop them, and Jack had figured out why. Those weasels of scientists had lied, they had lied rather than own up to their own folly. They blamed Daniel, and it was disgusting. The Kelownans wanted Daniel tried, they wanted to punish him for being a man of action when their entire country bred nothing but cowards. Jack barely listened. Hell hath no fury like Jack O'Neill and if they tried to physically bar them from leaving they would find out the hard way.

The breached the event horizon and Jack was screaming for Frasier the absolute second his mouth had passed through to Earth's side. They marched to the infirmary in formation, Jack leading, Teal'c taking up the rear. Carter was stating figures, numbers, _kinds of radiation_ to Frasier and _goddamn her for keeping a clear head_ when Jack's whole body felt numb.

The whole thing had happened so fast. 

Janet took Daniel away from them. Separated them. Even temporarily it felt like Jack was losing a limb. His heart tore down the center, what had been left of it. He knew what the numbers meant. He knew what Daniel had done. The consequences. The _goddamn_ irreversible consequences. Carter was explaining it to Teal'c, matter-of-factly, only her eyes seemed to betray any emotion, and Jack watched Teal'c's heart break too, with two words: "irreversible damage."

It had to be radiation poisoning. He would have wished anything else on Daniel. Would have wished that if someone on SG-1 had to suffer a slow death it could have been Jack. Wished that there was some way to undo it.

Carter's words echoed across his mind. "Irreversible damage." Jack wanted to scream.

\---

Janet couldn't do anything. 

From the moment he hit the ground of the laboratory Daniel knew it, maybe even before he jumped through the glass. Something inside of him had snapped, and he felt like the last of his emotions had finally dried up and it was _almost liberating_. They ran tests, a dozen tests, they took his blood, they poked and prodded his body until Daniel had finally begged them to stop. "It's no use, I know what I did."

Her face was pale, her eyes were red. She was trying, and Daniel felt bad for stopping her, but he knew his time was limited. He didn't want to spend his last days having his blood drawn, having tests run, when he knew, Janet knew, the whole infirmary knew. He was going to die.

\---

There were already signs of the poisoning on Daniel's skin. Textbook. Red sores. 

"The nausea will be followed by tremors, convulsions, and something called ataxia." Daniel's voice was monotone, like there was nothing left inside of him. Jack felt his wound tearing open freshly. "Surface tissue, brain tissue, and internal organs will inflame and degrade, I believe that's called necrosis."

His heart tightened. His chest hurt, his eyes hurt, everything hurt. And he felt terrible for even thinking that everything hurt when Daniel was droning on in front of him, describing in cold medical detail what was going to happen, what _was_ happening inside of his body. Jack wanted to jump up and hold Daniel, to tell him _everything_. It wouldn't be fair, though. He wanted to send Daniel off with a smile, with something, he wanted him to understand what he meant to the world. Wanted him to know he had done good. 

There was nothing he could do for Daniel.

He had debriefed with Hammond and Carter, he had tried to make sense of what was happening, but it still felt like he was moving through a thick fog.

Daniel was going to die. _And there was nothing he could do._ He couldn't even convince Daniel to give up, to fight back, to at least die with the dignity of not being framed when he had saved their entire country.

"Nothing we say is going to stop them." Daniel finished his thought, finished their conversation, succinctly. Definitively. Jack could tell he wanted to be done with this topic.

He left. 

\---

Daniel asked Janet to keep visitors away for a bit. He wanted to think, wanted to sleep, wanted to be alone. The slow drip of painkillers made sleeping easier that he would have expected.

His dreams were of Oma Desala. 

And Oma offered him everything, and he deserved nothing.

\---

Looking at Jonas Jack couldn't help but feel a slowly simmering rage. He was healthy, he had suffered minimal effects from the radiation, and his life was going to continue. His reward for cowardice was perfect health. But when he looked at Jack, he had the distinct feeling that Jonas was seeing through him, that Jonas knew more about Jack than anyone. 

"Look, Daniel's going to die. He's not going to survive this, there is simply no way for him to." Jonas watched Jack give his speech calmly.

"And you're mad at me." He said bluntly.

"I'm mad at your entire fucking country, I'm mad at your whole goddamn planet." Jack said, his teeth clenched. "He's going to die, we can't stop it, you can't stop it, nobody can stop it. But you're going to let him die, when he saved you, when he saved your whole world, and then you're going to blame him."

"I can't help what my superiors choose to think."

\---

Sam came to him, Teal'c came to him. It felt like they had been in Kelowna an hour ago, but Daniel was already falling apart. _Literally_. He couldn't differentiate consciousness and unconsciousness, meeting with Oma Desala one moment and the next talking to Teal'c or Sam or Jack.

At one point he could have sworn Jack was going to confess his love. Maybe he had, Daniel's mind was far gone. 

\---

Jack tried to tell him, but he could barely get any words out. He didn't want to cry, not in front of Daniel, and because he spent all his energy keeping his voice in check his words lacked emotion. But he swore to Daniel that he wouldn't take the fall for what happened on Kelowna, that much was truthful. 

"Danny." Jack said, his voice tight. Daniel didn't reply, he was unconscious again. "I love you. And goddammit you're not supposed to be the one who dies like this. I take all the risks, I fight all the battles, and I die young. You should have decades left to go."

\---

Over time it felt like he was spending more time talking to Oma Desala that anyone else. He figured that meant his body could no longer sustain him, that he was permanently losing consciousness. And as he faced the end, as he drew closer to what he had known was coming, Daniel did feel a glimmer of regret. There was so much more knowledge in the universe that he'd never attained. Knowledge that he could have used to protect Earth, to protect humanity, to protect Jack. He felt himself making a decision, weighing his life and knowing that for all his failures, for all his epic fuck-ups, he had lived a good life and he had _done great things_.

He could feel what was happening, knew that Jacob was here, and Jacob was trying to save him. And he knew that Oma would help him appear to Jack, he needed to tell Jack. Only Jack could stop them.

Only Jack could make them let him go.

\---

And after all that, after all their time, after everything left unsaid. Daniel's final words to Jack, "I don't know," and Jack was standing here next to Carter, and Daniel was flatlining. Daniel was flatlining. And Daniel was gone.

Jack inhaled, felt the grief palpable in the room. He had to pull himself together, he had to lead the team because his wasn't the only heart that was tearing into pieces. He ground his teeth. Daniel didn't even know if he was going someplace better. Their lives were dangerous, Jack lived every day like it was his last. He just had never expected to be the one left behind.


	2. Strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonas joins SG-1.

Guinness at the bar was horrible, Guinness at home is suicidally lonely. Picking at the opaque water ring on his oak dining table Jack mused that Hammond had misread the situation this time. Normally he was skilled at doling out leave when it was necessary, but it was the first time Jack could remember that leave was exactly the wrong solution. If they could have gone on a mission or two, or five, or a hundred, maybe they could have kept busy enough to forget. 

The matter at hand was that SG-1 was down a man, but SG-1 was not just a team. Hammond had politely hinted to Jack that he could use the leave to consider a fourth for SG-1, but it felt like being told to replace his own arm. SG-1 was Carter, Teal'c, Jack, and Daniel. Adding a stranger to the mix was not only _morally wrong_ , it would make the team inefficient. Or so he had argued to General Hammond.

Jack tapped the bottle of beer on his table a little hard. And again, harder. And a third time, leaving a small dent on the worn wood surface. Jonas wanted to join SG-1, he had been painfully clear about it before Jack had left the base. Something about honoring Daniel's memory, yadda yadda. Like fuck Jack was going to let that little prick do anything to _honor Daniel's memory_. If it weren't for Doctor Prettyboy Quinn and his whole fucked up planet they wouldn't need to be considering a fourth for SG-1, let along how to _honor_ Daniel's motherfucking memory. The beer bottle slipped from Jack's grasp and rolled across the table, falling onto the floor loudly and rolling towards the sliding glass door. Burying his head in his arms on the table Jack screamed as loud as he could.

\---

The SGC was divided. Their path was not clear to them yet, but it would become clear given time. Jonas came to Earth and asked for asylum from Kelowna, if Daniel was still human this would have surprised him. Or pleased him. Or maybe the face that he recognized that meant that it still did, despite his current state. Or it was just of no consequence. As it stood he watched it happen and tried to not find himself frustrated with Jack's reactions. With Jack's selfish downward spiral. _Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned._ He perceived the past, present, and future simultaneously, tangled threads rubbing against each other, tightening and slackening, difficult yet natural to process.

Being ascended was nothing like what Daniel had imagined. There was millennia's worth of knowledge and understanding that was afforded to the ascended, but learning was a slow process. He learned, he knew, but he didn't always understand. And the freedom from emotions that he had expected to find was completely absent. He still stressed, he felt sadness, compassion, empathy, love. And with his emotions came an inevitable emptiness. As though he still experienced emotion, but it was numbed. _Though I think not to think about it, I do think about it and shed tears thinking about it._ More and more Daniel found himself speaking and thinking in koans, drawing further away.

\---

"Colonel?" _Bang bang bang._ "Colonel are you in there?"

Carters voice woke Jack up from where he had passed out face first into the table. He groaned, rubbing the stubble on his cheek with the palm of his hand, and wondered how long he had been out. He tried to stand and his knees ached, he had been asleep for hours probably, it felt like every vertebrae in his back screamed in protest as he straightened up. 

"I'm coming, I'm coming." He mumbled, knowing that Carter probably couldn't hear him through the door.

Pulling the front door open, Jack was faced with a red-eyed, messy-haired Carter. "With all due respect, sir--" She began, looking him head to toe, "You look like shit."

"You look fantastic yourself, Carter." He grumbled, stepping aside so she could enter his house. "What brings you to my neck of the woods?"

"Beer," Carter held up a paper grocery store bag she was holding, "And uh, Teal'c." Jack looked behind Carter and saw the tall Jaffa shutting the door of her car, a baseball cap pulled low over his head and another paper bag in his arms.

"Oh, it's gonna be a fucking party, is it?" Sarcastic.

"Yes, sir. We're going to drink, and we're going to laugh, and cry, and talk." She was serious, she had actually put a lot of thought into this. "Daniel knew what he was doing, he knew what was coming, and he wouldn't want us moping around."

"Yeah--" His hair felt greasy as he ran a hand through it. "When you're right, you're right. He'd have his little panties in a knot if he thought we were moping." Jack waved at Teal'c as he walking up the drive. "Hey, Teal'c."

"O'Neill." Teal'c nodded his head, following Carter into Jack's living room. "On Chulak, when a great warrior dies, he is not mourned. His death is celebrated, because he lived a life of valor and death comes at the end of every life." Even as he spoke, Jack could see that Teal'c's eyes were red-rimmed like Carters, and just as his own must appear. SG-1, putting on fronts for the world.

"And a life of valor he lived." Jack managed. He bit his lip, trying to call the tears back that threatened to show. "What do you guys say we fire up the grill, get some burgers to go with our beers?"

"That would be most satisfactory." "Sounds great." They responded simultaneously.

\---

_Empty-handed I entered_  
the world  
Barefoot I leave it.  
My coming, my going --  
Two simple happenings  
That got entangled. 

Daniel considered the words of Kozan Ichikyo he had read multiple times as a living human, watching his friends try to hold a simple celebration, but bumbling around each other's emotions awkwardly. Becoming ascended was like uncovering the ancestor of Buddhist enlightenment, refined, but brutish, different, but actually almost the same. Wandering the universe he considered poetry he had read, poetry he hadn't read, and the religions of the world; past, present, and yet to be conceived. The religions of the universe. That a single person could _move on_ and yet a, realistically speaking, very small group of people should react that it is the end of everything. Daniel was one person, while he did great things, his time within the galaxy amounted to nothing more than a quick blink in the time of the ascended. More and more he was becoming distant from humanity.

\---

"Remember--remember when Daniel accidentally asked the chieftain of P2X-159 to kiss his ass?" Carter giggled, a tomato slice slipping from her burger in her hands to the paper plate balanced on her lap.

"And he tried to do it!" Jack laughed, and took a swig of his guinness. "Oh my god he was so red!"

"DanielJackson was very embarrassed at that time!" Teal'c chuckled and Jack and Carter calmed down a little bit.

Tilting his head back, Jack finished his beer. Carter took a bite of her burger. Teal'c's chuckle took the edge of a sob. Jack hated this party, he hated having to share his grief, hated having grief that was worth trying to share. He was drunk, he could tell that much, and he was miserable, and he hated trying to laugh out of misery. The older he had grown the more he had begun to fear his own death, to be conscious of his own death, to expect his own death around the corner at any given moment. He had never planned to be the one left behind by anyone, and it seemed like people just kept leaving him behind no matter how hard he tried to die.

"Well--I'm just gonna go to the bathroom." Jack stood up and swayed back and forth a moment, waiting for his legs to catch up with his brain.

"No," Carter put down her burger, he voice slurred from the alcohol she had consumed. "Don't you fucking dare."

"Excuse me, Carter?"

"Don't you fucking go off to cry, I know that face, _Jack_. Don't you dare." Her face was dead serious, pink around the edges from drunkenness, but her eyes were sober. "Like you're the only one that wants to do it."

"MajorCarter is right, O'Neill." Teal'c intoned, his head cocked to the side. "This is not the way to honour DanielJackson."

"Newsflash guys! I don't _want_ to honour Daniel Fucking Jackson!" Jack clawed at either side of his neck in frustration, pulling at his hair. "He took off. He amscrayed and left the rest of us behind here picking up the pieces."

"DanielJackson died a hero." Serious-voiced, Teal'c tilted his head, daring Jack to say otherwise. 

"Yeah, he did." Jack conceded. "But he didn't have to."

\---

A swirling vortex of super-heated plasma surrounded Daniel, enveloped him, his atoms blended with it, and separated it, he swam through it, blazing colours erupting and contracting and expanding thousands of miles in every direction. Inside of a white dwarf Daniel escaped the Earth, the galaxy, the problems of the universe that he was forbidden from tampering with. Throbbing rhythmic booms filled his hearing until he couldn't imagine having ever heard anything different, he reached out spreading himself through the plasma, contracting to a ball, shooting through the center where the heat was so impossibly hot Daniel expected his body to disappear, before realizing that it already had. He was seeing sights no human being could imagine, feeling them, hearing them, embracing them, building them into his very being with every hum of the star that surrounded him. Forgetting everything else.

\---

"Jonas." Jack mumbled around a mouthful of fruit loops. He had been battling a serious hangover after the impromptu party with Teal'c and Carter had run until midnight. They had worked through their emotions exactly as Carter had suggested, spending the night alternating between laughing, crying, and talking about all of their experiences as SG-1, the whole night smoothly lubricated with plenty of guinness. 

"Jack--Er, Colonel O'Neill." Jonas sat at the commissary table across from him, bearing a tray piled with pancakes and orange juice. "Have you thought about what I asked you?"

"No." He shoveled another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. 

"You haven't thought about it at all?" Jonas asked incredulously, his breakfast untouched. 

"No, the answer is no." 

"Why?" Persistent. 

"You want the list?" Jack dropped his spoon into the empty ceramic bowl with an unceremonious clatter. "Item one: you are too new to the SGC, item two: you are a refugee, item three: I don't trust you, item four: _I don't plan on replacing Doctor Jackson._ "

"I don't see how items one and two affect me since Teal'c became a member of the team as a refugee practically on day one, you have to replace Daniel, I know, I've heard you and General Hammond arguing, and--why don't you trust me?"

"Maybe it's less that I don't trust _you_ and more that I don't trust myself not to _strangle you_." Pushing his bowl away from the edge of the table, Jack got up to leave. 

"That's pretty unfair you know!" Jonas called after him. 

"Yeah, so is what happened to Daniel on your planet." Jack muttered, disappearing around the doorway of the commissary. 

Today was going to be a long day. Every single day in the foreseeable future would be, Jack could feel it. Like time was being pulled and stretched, dragging every moment into infinity. Hammond had already suggested that they appease the Russians by making the fourth in SG-1 a Russian citizen, but Jack had yet to meet any candidate that even approached replacing Daniel.

Before he had realized where he was going Jack found himself standing in the doorway of Daniel's darkened office, many of the antiquities already gently packed into crates awaiting storage. He stared into the gloom, Daniel's messy desk as yet untouched, a jacket draped over the back of his chair as though he had just stepped out for a moment and would be coming back. Papers strewn across the hardwood desktop, a pen resting on top of one stack that bore his distinctive handwriting. Jack scowled.

"Where did you go, Daniel?"

\---

The heartbeat of creation, the mysteries of the universe were clarifying in his thoughts and the most shocking revelation was that he felt that he had always known the answers, that the revelations ultimately meant nothing more than the questions had meant to him on Earth. Daniel extended his reach, watched his star fade, expand, then contract around him, wondered briefly if there had been live on the planets that orbited the sun and realizing, yes he already knew, and yes there was. On several of them. There had been life. He felt the thrum of the rapidly contracting star and felt a wave of helplessness, knowing that lives were being snuffed out all around him, knowing that it was within his means to save them and stop all suffering, but not within his power. If he had fists he would clench them, he wanted to scream into the plasma that surrounded him. 

\---

 _Had Daniel loved Jonas?_ Jack asked himself, alone in the locker room under the punishing ice cold spray of the shower. Well, he had sacrificed himself to save Jonas, there had to be something there. Some sort of potential. Or had he saved Jonas' people, Jonas' planet. What had Daniel been thinking as he jumped through the observation window? More accurately, had he been thinking at all? Jack had seen Daniel leading himself through intuition, lacking thought, completely devoid of what Jack would consider logic. In his own world of Daniel-logic.

Maybe it would actually be within Daniel's expectations to tap Jonas for SG-1. It seemed like something Daniel would have wanted, show the naive refugee the galaxy and change his mind about the significance of war and weapons of mass destruction, show him was pacifism was, and that there were forces operating on other planets that would put any of the citizens of his rival nations to shame in terms of sheer monstrosity. Sure, Daniel probably would have wanted that. And over the years as the absent-minded archeologist has warmed on Jack, Jack had found himself willing to do anything that would potentially appease Daniel.

 _So, let's talk to Hammond, then._ Jack mused.

\---

There was no such thing as a stranger to Daniel, no longer anything particularly surprising except for his occasional emotional lapses. Jonas taking his place on SG-1 was neither surprising nor emotionally upsetting. It was natural. On his last night as a complete healthy human being Daniel had loved Jonas physically, had shared the bodies and through that connection their hopes and desires. It was only natural that someone who had shared that emotional bond with Daniel should replace him, and Daniel trusted him to keep Jack in line, to take the harsher edges off of the team. To fill his roles. To replace him.

Replace him, replace him, replace him, replace him, replace him, replace him, _replace him_.

With acute clarity Daniel knew exactly what the future held, and it upset him in a completely erroneous, selfish, and unexpected way.

\---

"I'm more than excited to walk down this road with you, Jack--Sir." Jonas was flustered, fidgeting in his BDUs, clearly excited beyond his own comprehension. "I've been reading Da-Doctor Jackson's work, and I'm beginning to understand how SG-1 operates, and the role that he played on the team. I'm prepared to take that role."

His eyes locked on Jack, and Jack could feel a nervous flutter in his chest, like Jonas could read his thoughts, his life, through one look. He could feel his palms start to warm up along with his cheeks. Jonas Quinn was definitely an attractive man, Jack could appreciate why Daniel had chosen him as a partner on Kelowna. "I find that hard to believe, Quinn." Jack snapped back.

Jonas looked crestfallen. "I just mean, I've--I've read a lot about your interactions in Doctor Jackson's journals, and I think I--I know what he brought to the team. I can try to bring that too."

\---

In actuality Jonas _had_ read a great deal about their interactions in Daniel's journal, just not the kind Jack was thinking of. Different than he had led on to Jack, since the journal's he was reading were not only the ones Daniel kept on his desk for reference on their missions, but his hidden journal in the back of the lowest desk drawer, where Daniel kept his personal feelings on certain manners. Certain manners most commonly involved Jack O'Neill, and more often than not various fantasies involving the Colonel and multiple offworld expeditions, locker rooms, showers, beds, and anywhere that Daniel had happened to imagine being completely and thoroughly fucked into submission by his commanding officer. 

Daniel had watched Jonas find it, knowing that Jonas was searching for just such a document when he began rifling through Daniel's desk and personal belongings, digging through every drawer to the deepest recesses. Jonas felt guilty about what had happened to Daniel, but that hadn't changed their night together, or the indelible mark it had left on Jonas. He masturbated several times to Daniel's personal journal entries that night when most of the base had cleared out. Daniel indecisively transferred between watching Jonas, sweaty, and enamored; and Jack tossing and turning in his own bed unable to sleep. He continued to be unable to watch Jack objectively, while the ascended did not feel physical arousal, he felt a pining tingle deep in his soul for Jack. He loved him, he still loved Jack with all of his being, knowing now that it had always been the most profound love of his life. His relationship with Jonas had been a purely physical attraction, and watching Jonas reenacting Daniel's own fantasies in his head, hand slick with saliva and precum, pumping the same cock that Daniel had once held in his mouth while still alive Daniel felt achingly empty.

An intelligent man, Jonas was also a determined one. If Daniel wasn't still reeling from his epiphany of jealousy he would probably feel flattered that Jonas had taken so much pleasure from his personal fantasies that he was set to pursue them in reality. 

As Jonas continued his self-ministrations in Cheyenne Mountain, Jack had grown bored with creating shapes and stories to accompany the shadows playing across his popcorn ceiling. Slowly one cold hand snaked over Jack's abdomen, twirling his own fingers in the dark coarse hairs that furred his skin, trailing to the waistband of his boxers. He sighed, and Daniel could feel the bitterness in it like a physical movement from across the room, resigned, heartbroken, Jack closed his eyes against the tears that were threatening to fall and wrapped his hand around his flaccid prick. "Daniel, where are you going?" Jack whispered, gently stroking the hardening member from base to tip.

Hesitating for only a moment, Daniel faded out of Jack's bedroom, guilty for having spent too long watching the man's most intimate moments, and returned to the stars.

\---

"Jack?" A soft knock on his office door woke Jack up.

Sitting up slowly, Jack scowled at the small drool stain on the scratch-guard of his desk. He rubbed his face roughly with one palm, massaging his eyes as they adjusted to the fluorescent light of his office. "Yeah? Come in." He grumbled.

Jonas awkwardly stepped into the office, closing the door slowly behind him. "Um." He rubbed his hands awkwardly on his BDUs. 

"Did you need _something_?" Jack growled, he was exhausted, he hadn't slept at all the night before and had been trying to get a nap in between meetings in his office.

"Well, uh. You see--" Jonas studied the floor, "Sam's worried about you. I mean, we all are." Jonas took a step forward, raising his eyes to meet Jack's. His hair was mussed over his forehead and judging by his general appearance he had managed about as much sleep as Jack had. "Do you want to talk about it."

"No, not really." Jack pushed his chair away from the desk. "But you're going to try to make me, just like everyone else does." Leaning back in his chair Jack sighed and maintained eye contact with Jonas.

"I--" Jonas looked away briefly. "I loved him too, you know."

"Did you?" Jack knew a bluff when he heard one, and it irritated him to hear Jonas say it when Jonas had not only let Daniel _die_ for his country, but had nearly let his good reputation die with him. He felt his earlier rage at Jonas resurfacing. 

"Well," Jonas grimaced. _Got you._ Jack thought satisfied. "I mean, I could have. I think I would have. Had I known him like you did. Had I been able to spend time with him. I think--I think he was really remarkable Jack, everything I've read, he was--I should have realized, before it was too late."

Jack sighed again. When the kid was right, he was damn right. "Yeah, I should've too." He drew his jaw together tightly, realizing what he had implicitly admitted to. 

Jonas smiled briefly, a fleeting smile of understanding. "Well, if you ever want to talk about it or--I'm here, Jack." He coughed gently into a closed fist and Jack couldn't avoid looking at the slow blush that creeped up Jonas' cheeks, highlighting his dimples. _He's a cute kid._ Jack couldn't avoid thinking, remembering that he had thought much the same when he watched Daniel flirting with him on Kelowna. 

"I'll remember that." Jack's voice came out gravelly, he hands felt clammy. 

Jonas smiled and left his office, shutting the door lightly.

_Goddammit._

\---

_The concerns of humans do not concern me._

_The concerns of humans do not concern me._

_The concerns of humans do not concern me._

_The concerns of humans do not concern me._

Daniel wanted to scream, the Tok'ra were making mistakes, the Goa'uld were making plans, Earth, everyone, every single person he ever knew and loved could be dead very very soon and yet the thing that plagued his brain, the thing that ate up all of his ability to think and drove him to hide inside of stars, at the furthest reaches of the galaxy, wherever he could avoid hearing living creatures, was the heartbreaking choice Jack was so close to making, mistake or not. 

He continued to meditate, trying to forget about Anubis, about Abydos, about Earth, about Jonas Fucking Quinn.

_The concerns of humans do not concern me anymore._

_The concerns of humans do not concern me anymore._

_The concerns of humans do not concern me anymore._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2:
> 
> The theme song of this chapter is "Strangers" by the Kinks.
> 
> I spent the bulk of this chapter getting some plot out of the way that needed to be dealt with. Setting to work on chapter 3 straight away!


	3. Daniel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some time skips in this chapter that should be pretty clear.

The whiskey burned down Jack's throat, leaving a warm trail clear to his stomach. It didn't help, it didn't make anything suddenly clear, and one double didn't make him suddenly drunk enough to not care. Wordlessly he waved for another from the bartender who slid it across the bar with practiced grace. Drinking the second double quickly Jack almost felt like the liquor was starting to kick in, the third really did it, causing the cottony feeling that had plagued his brain all day start to fade away, the tightness in his sternum started to clear gradually. He ordered a fourth and downed it. He smiled grimly at the dregs of whisky mixing with the melting ice cubes in his glass. From across the small bar he heard the click of someone selecting a song on the juke box and felt his heart hit the floor as the first notes played over the speakers. 

_Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane..._

"Oh christ." Jack mumbled, putting his glass down on the hardwood bar a little too roughly, causing the bartender to look towards him sharply. Nausea hit him in a strong wave and he bit his tongue to keep the rising bile down. He had drunk too much, eaten too little, slept too little, and it was coming up fast. He waved at the bartender to close his tab, and quickly signed the receipt that he thrust to Jack along with his credit card. _Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye, God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes._

"Thanks man." The bartender nodded quietly, and turned to talk to another customer.

Stumbling, Jack rushed outside towards his car, the crisp nighttime Colorado Springs air prickling along his skin, speeding up the impending explosion. As he reached his car Jack bent over and retched onto the asphalt, but nothing came up besides a small amount of frothy bile, leaving a yellowish glob on the grey parking lot. Jack could still hear the music coming from the bar, drifting through the quiet night. _Lord I miss Daniel, oh I miss him so much._

Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, disgusted with himself, Jack climbed into his car and sat down, resting his forehead on the cold steering wheel. Jack waited for the chilly night air to sober him up, but the nauseating fuzz didn't want to fade out of his head. Reaching over clumsily he threw the passenger console open and yanked out an array of papers and fast food napkins until he got to the box that he knew was buried deep in the back. He last half used carton of marlboro reds. Opening the carton he felt a flood of relief when he saw that there was still an old twenty-five cent bic lighter wedged alongside the worse-for-the-wear cigarettes. 

He had stopped smoking after the first mission to Abydos. He had come back to earth, miraculously still alive despite all attempts otherwise, and tried vainly to pick up the broken pieces of his life he had left behind. The first thing that had needed to happen was to quit smoking. Charlie had never liked it when he smoked, Sarah had never liked it when he smoked, and if he was going to live his life the rest of the way through he wanted to die on his terms, not wither away from lung cancer like so many friends he had watched. But this last pack, six maybe seven years old, he had found just the other day when he was looking for an old business card. It was exactly what he needed tonight, a relaxing smoke to sober up, and then he would drive home. 

And probably kill himself, Jack mused.

_No, no, no, shit that's not right._ Jack inhaled sharply, lips around the lit cigarette, and choked. He caught the cigarette just before it fell into his lap and after a few quick lungfuls of air put it back in his mouth. If he didn't kill himself on Abydos, he wasn't going to do it now. Not when it wouldn't even mean anything, not when it wouldn't get him anywhere. No, Daniel Jackson took the easy way out, Jack O'Neill has to stick around and pick up the pieces.

Jack immediately hated himself for having even thought that. He knew better than that, he knew Daniel hadn't taken the easy way out, Daniel hadn't given up. Daniel had made the hard decision and saved an entire planet. And the rest of SG-1, all things considered. 

_Alright_ , Jack stubbed the cigarette out on the outside of his car door and flicked it into the parking lot. He couldn't go home, or rather he didn't want to. On a night like this, thinking the kinds of thoughts he had already thought, he couldn't stand to be alone. Even if he wasn't going to shoot himself he didn't want to be trapped by himself with his own psyche. He couldn't go to a bar, he had already exhausted his interest in alcohol for the night. So, if he can't go home, and he can't go to a bar, where else could he go at two in the morning?

Turning the keys in his ignition and lighting another cigarette, Jack pulled out of the small bar parking lot and onto the main road. There was only one place left to go to tonight, one place with people who could maybe understand what he was going through. Underneath the Cheyenne Mountain complex, in the SGC.

\---

"In the long run you will find that humans can solve their own problems." Oma smiled at Daniel from across the forest clearing where they had met on an uninhabited planet. "It takes some getting used to, but when you meddle--you cause more trouble than if you had left them be."

"But you meddled!" Daniel argued.

"Yes, that is true. And I will pay for it." Oma looked a little sad. "I have before, and I will continue to. I do not want you to choose that path."

"But what if Earth is destroyed, Oma? What if--how can I possibly make that worse? Anubis has so much power and the Earth and the Tok'ra are totally incapable of stopping him!"

"Do you want to save Earth, Daniel?" Oma asks.

"Of course!" Daniel was already tired of this argument, they had been arguing for days over Anubis.

"Is it the whole Earth you want to save, or just a single human?" 

Daniel grimaced. "Nobody deserves to die at the hands of Anubis, Oma."

"If you knew already the candlelight is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago."

\---

Carter's lab was empty and dark. Jack stood in the doorway for several minutes, staring at the meticulously arranged room. For the first time in how long Carter had actually called it a day at a reasonable time and gone home? It seemed that everyone at the SGC had retired at a reasonable time. Carter was gone, Janet was gone, General Hammond was gone. Jack felt uncomfortable talking to Teal'c tonight, he found it difficult to admit to Teal'c that he was suffering in a moment of complete weakness.

And that left one person at the SGC. 

_Well._ Jack sighed, walking away from the empty lab. _I'll just see if Jonas is awake, is all._

Jack's heels echoed through the empty hallways of the SGC as he walked briskly towards the dormitories. His head still felt fuzzy, and he still felt a little worried that if he went home now he would do something stupid.

The door to Jonas' quarters seemed huge and foreboding in the middle of the night. It stood a good foot taller than Jack and the green paint shone dully in the fluorescent lights of the hallway. Jack knocked lightly, the metal cold under his knuckles. Jonas opened the door after two heartbeats, his face flushed and his hair mussed in every angle. He was only wearing a pair of wrinkled BDU pants.

"Jack?" He said groggily. "I thought you went home hours ago!"

"I did." He replied matter-of-factly, unsure of what exactly to say. How often, when you are grieving, do people say 'I'm here if you ever need to talk,' and how rarely had Jack actually taken someone up on that offer? Never, by Jack's count. And Jack had lost a lot over the years and had a lot of well-meaning people offer kind words and empty platitudes. "I--" Jack rubbed his face with one hand, trying to push sobriety into his appearance forcefully, "I just needed someone to talk to."

When Jonas smiled his dimples stuck out strongly, making his face all the more boyish. Jack had always thought Daniel had a boyish face, but Jonas Quinn's dimpled cheeks put Daniel's youthful appearance to shame. Jack flushed, feeling the heat in his face. "Sure, Jack, come in." Jonas stepped aside and Jack walked into the room.

Inside Jonas' room there were almost no signs of habitation. The military-issue blanket on his cot was pulled aside, and there was a mission-pack with one of Daniel's books sitting on top of it pushed against the headboard. Other than those small things there was no decoration, no personalization, nothing to show that a human being lived here at all. Jonas gestured to a folding chair that was unfolded by his mission-pack and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Jack was drunk. As sober as he had felt behind the wheel, he could feel the world swimming on the edges of his vision, feel his legs wobbling like jello underneath him, and feel the slow static of intoxication in his head. Jonas was looking at him from where he perched on the edge of the bed, brow furrowed, eyes somehow--expectant--as he watch Jack wobble back and forth, trying to get a hold of his thoughts, trying to find something coherent. And with sudden clarity Jack knew what he had _really_ come here for, and why Jonas was watching him with that pretty face, waiting, waiting. Jack's cock gave a little leap at the acknowledgement.

"I want to fuck you, Jonas Quinn." Jack heard himself say, and was mildly alarmed by his own bumptiousness. If only he had found this forward streak before, instead of always tiptoeing around, pretending Daniel hadn't made him feel the way he _always did_.

Opening his arms, Jonas gestured broadly. "I'm right here." He said, smiling.

Stepping forward, Jack reached out to Jonas and gripped his shoulder, pushing him backwards into the bed roughly. Jonas' muscles were tight, his body was lean and young and Jack couldn't remember the last time he had touched such well-toned musculature so freely. Straddling Jonas, grinding his half-hard cock against the younger man's, Jack kissed him forcefully, grabbing a fistful of his blonde hair and pulling his head back. He wanted to hurt Jonas, wanted to make him feel good, but wanted to remind himself more than anything that Jonas was a stand-in. Jonas groaned underneath him, the sultry voice sent heat through Jack's entire body, tracing down his spine, making him shiver with arousal.

Leaning back a little, still pulling Jonas' head back, Jack admired the taut lines of Jonas' neck, his clavicle, his smooth hairless chest. Breathing heavily, Jack leaned down and bit down hard on Jonas' shoulder, hard enough to leave a perfect crescent indent that would surely morph into a black bruise by the end of the night. He kissed the mark, running his tongue over it, and Jonas bucked his hips up into Jack's, igniting his arousal all over again.

Frantically, Jack began unzipping his jeans, struggling with the button, but managing to get them open and free his now completely hard cock from his boxers. Jonas' chest rose and fell rapidly with each breath, his face flushed crimson and his blonde hair turning brown with sweat. It was how he had always imagined Daniel, just like this, desperate, needy, horny. Jack had enjoyed several one night stands since splitting up with Sarah, and there was the woman he left behind on Edora, but still it had been awhile. He could feel the need to come building exponentially, furthered by Jonas' willingness to comply with his rough treatment. With shaking fingers Jack unbuttoned the fly of Jonas' BDUs only to find that Jonas had already come in his pants, his cock softening slowly.

"I--" Jonas began, his breathing still labored.

"No problem." Jack yanked the pants down to Jonas' ankles and twisted them as makeshift bondage, pushing Jonas' shins against his shoulders and revealing his smooth white ass. He ran his hand across Jonas' right cheek, patting it a little roughly and smiling. He trailed his index finger down Jonas' crack, swirling around his puckering hole.

"Lube--there's lube in the side of--" Jonas gasped as Jack gently pushed in a dry finger to the first knuckle, "--my bag."

Smiling grimly, Jack leaned down to reach the mission-pack, still holding Jonas' pants with one hand. He withdrew a small tube of unmarked liquid and held it up. Jonas nodded, his cock beginning to stiffen again. Jack slicked his cock, pumping it slowly to avoid overexciting himself. Jonas was beautiful, Jack couldn't deny Daniel had damn good taste. Compliant, shivering, and a total minx when it came to potency, he was already mostly hard again. Again Jack pushed his finger into Jonas' asshole, this time slicked with the clear lube. It went in easily and he carefully stretched Jonas, massaging lube into his anus with precision.

It was very quickly that Jack was no longer able to stand stretching Jonas with his finger only, and he replaced the digit with his cock, shining with lubrication in the bright fluorescent lighting of the dormitory room. He pushed in completely in one full stroke, Jonas gasped and threw his head back, gripping the thin bedsheets in both hands tightly. "Fuck, Jack, Fuck me!" Jonas keened. Jack pulled almost all the way out and thrust in again hard, building a steady rhythm. From what felt like another lifetime Jack could remember hearing Daniel's voice, "You're so tight" from the other side of a thin Kelownan dormitory wall. His bucking grew erratic as Jack pictured Daniel fucking the same young blonde man that currently had Jack buried to the hilt, driving him to the same whining gasping state that he was in now. Coming in this same asshole. Jack lost it at that thought and came in a flood of heat and passion, and suddenly there were tears in his eyes. He pulled out and watched the thin trickle of semen ooze out of Jonas' hole, relaxing his grip on Jonas' pants so he could lower his legs.

Sobriety hit Jack with the force of a sledgehammer.

He had just fucked one of his men, hard, too hard, within the walls of an Air Force Base. And he was crying, against his will, he could feel the tears filling his eyes because he had been saving some fractured part of his heart for Daniel and with his newfound sobriety he realized that he was never going to be able to give that to him.

"Jack?" Jonas whisper in a small, breathy voice.

Jack looked down at him, flushed, messy, sweaty, pretty-boy dimpled cheeks and all. "I'm sorry." He whispered, sliding off the bed and trying to rise to his feet.

"It's okay, I--I liked it, Jack. It's okay." Jonas sat up, trying to untangle the pants that kept his ankles hopelessly bound together.

"No, besides that. This can't happen ever again, Jonas." Jack swallowed, tucking his flaccid prick back into his jeans and zipping them up.

"Why?"

"Because there are rules, Jonas. There are rules on Earth. I'm your commanding officer, we're military, we have to be able to work together and besides I--This _can't happen again_. We--" Jack patted his hair down, trying to straighten himself up so he didn't look like he had just had wild kinky sex on base. His words trickled away from him. 

Jonas eyes were wide, his brow knotted together in thought. "I won't tell anyone."

"I know." Jack said, and left Jonas' room briskly.

\---

"Everyone who went to Antarctica is dying, Oma." Daniel growled, a quick burst of wind rushing through the clearing, rustling the leaves, and breezing straight through the two figures. "I have to help them. I have to--"

"It will be resolved, Daniel. They will resolve it." Oma is unconcerned, staring past Daniel at the dappled shadows in the forest.

"How can you know that?" Daniel clenches his fist, the argument is starting to feel unreal. "She is healing people, but she _can't heal everyone._ "

"And yet, a solution will arrive."

"Oma, it's not coming. It's not coming, and Jack is _dying_."

"If you knew at first the candlelight was fire then the meal would have been cooked a long time ago."

"Goddammit Oma I _still don't know what that means._ "

"You see there, the Tok'ra have brought a solution."

\---

The first conscious thought that Jack had was that there were a lot of people around him. A lot of unfamiliar people. A lot of malicious looking unfamiliar people. _Last time I trust a fucking snake._ With a rush of darkness he passed out.

When Jack opened his eyes again the room he was in was painfully bright, his skull thrummed dully and he could tell he had suffered a head wound at some point. He moved to touch the back of his head, but found that he was somehow held tightly against a wall. _Not a good sign._ As his eyesight slowly cleared until the fuzziness was only on the periphery, until his head only pounded a little, Jack clearly saw a man standing ten feet away from him. One he was reasonably certain he had never seen before in his life, but somewhere in the back of his head there was a tinkling recognition, as though he had never seen the man before, but the man was relevant, he had forgotten that he had seen the man before. A creeping sense of deja vu caught up to him.

"Who are you?" The man growled, Goa'uld. Of course. _Of course it has to be another goddamn snake._

A swirl of anger filled Jack from the belly up to his throat. Literally nothing could possibly go his way lately, and of course the ultimate culmination is being bound by a Goa'uld bastard with no feasible means of escape. Pulling his thoughts together, Jack mused that he had probably been in worse situations over the years with much more dire possibilities, and he had always made it out of those with all of his limbs and life intact. But then Daniel had bitten it on a fairly routine mission offworld, so he couldn't really say for certain if he believed that this would work out.

And so he bluffed. He snarked. He rolled his eyes at Ba'al, even after ascertaining his identity. And it earned him a fantastically painful knife in the shoulder. Not the worst wound he had ever taken, his scars always reminded him of everything he had survived in Iraq, but dammit it _smarted_. Then another knife, and another, by the third he almost couldn't feel the wounds anymore, shock was taking hold of him entirely. Then enfolding searing pain, starting in his heart that shook through his entire body like a human earthquake, causing his teeth to clench, his brain to throb like an explosion in slow motion until suddenly, darkness.

When we woke up he was in what was clearly a holding cell. Gingerly he touched the scorched remains of his shirt and felt the soft new skin underneath. A sarcophagus. With appalling coherence Jack knew that there was not going to be an easy way out of this mess. A voice startled him and he looked up at the ceiling of his cell to see a slight woman peering down at him, asking him questions that didn't fully register in a lilting accent. Resurrection, hallucinations, he was starting to feel an awful lot like he had taken Daniel's role on the team as the shit hit the fan. The guards were going to take him again, of that Jack was certain. Ba'al would interrogate him again, and once again he would have nothing to tell him, he had no idea why he was here and his own snake had died and left him alone on this trip. And Ba'al would kill him again, and resurrect him, and this was going to be a vicious cycle into eternity if he didn't do something. 

Jack crouched, wrapping his arms around his torso and tried to think. Sam could sometimes access Jolinar's memories, and had felt lasting impacts from her brief time as a host. The same must hold true for Jack, he must be able to reach inside and find Kanan's memories. He felt a tingling deja vu in the back of his head, like the palace he was in, the planet it was on, everything was vaguely familiar. Even the young woman who had since vanished. _Ba'al._ Jack started with what he knew, the Goa'uld's name. He wrapped his thoughts around the name, using it as an anchor, as a device to hold his thinking down. _Ba'al._ No bells rung, no epiphany shook his brain. All Jack knew was the name Ba'al, and it didn't inspire any new knowledge. He gripped his head tightly, one hand wrapped around either side, and pressed hard as though he thought he could squeeze the knowledge out like juicing an orange. Nothing. 

"Hi, Jack." A casual voice broke his reverie. He turned to see Daniel sitting on a bench against the wall, looking calmer and more self assured than ever. This had to be a new, crueler game the Goa'uld were adding to their repertoire.

_God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes._ Jack could almost hear the tinny sound of the old juke box at the bar, the poor recording of Elton John's crooning voice. A suffocating pain wrapped around his heart and Jack sat down opposite Daniel and tried to sound in full control of his emotions. He couldn't deny that this Daniel sure as hell sounded like his Daniel. He looked like his Daniel, he postulated like his Daniel, he had that sad faraway look that Daniel sometimes got.

It just might be his Daniel.

But Daniel; his Daniel, Oma's Daniel, the Goa'uld's Daniel, it didn't really matter whose Daniel, couldn't do a damn thing to help him. He had made the mistake of trusting the Tokra to put a snake in him, he wasn't going to trust Oma's gang to _ascend him_ or whatever the hell it was.

\---

"So you want to be my Oma?" Jack asked him incredulously.

"No, I wouldn't put it that way." Daniel mumbled. _I just want to be together with you again, I don't want us to be separated, and I can't watch you go through what you're going to go through._

When Jack had come back a second time he was worse, he was addled, his brain was already showing signs of wear along the seams. And he was angry. Vindictive.

"You know Jonas, he's _at least_ as smart as you are!" He bit at Daniel, and it hurt. Maybe Jack didn't mean for it to hurt the way it did, maybe he didn't even know that it would. They argued, but it didn't have the camaraderie behind it that their arguments once did. They were angry with each other, for being alive and not being alive, for surviving the ways that they had.

And then Jack begged him for death, and Daniel realized that he wasn't cut out to be a god at all, in actuality or in appearance. His heart broke again and again as he watch Ba'al's guards take Jack away again, screaming all the way.

\---

Ba'al started with his questions, Jack's vision blending and swirling so that one moment his saw Ba'al, and the next it was Shallan demanding information in her delicate lilting voice. Jack of course denied having any of Kanan's knowledge, he didn't have another option. If he fabricated something Ba'al would know and would only become more angry.

And so Jack watched, suspending against the spiderwebbed wall by heavy gravity, as Ba'al extracted various vials and knives from his hidden cubby of toys. His heart raced, his vision faded in and out, Ba'al sat upright in his chair, playing with a knife, his feet several feet apart so that Jack had a direct view of the tight crotch of his black pants. He couldn't look away as he realized what he was seeing, Ba'al was hard, the already stretched fabric of his pants leaving nothing to the imagination as his cock swelled against his leg.

"Daniel." Jack said softly, hoping that somewhere he was still watching, that he could act. Stop what was starting to seem inevitable.

Daniel didn't come. Of course, because Daniel only came when Jack was alone, he would risk too much coming when Ba'al was watching. But he was risking losing Jack's belief in him, his powers, and whether or not Daniel was in reality visiting him. 

"Jaffa." Ba'al growled, and a male Jaffa appeared in the doorway behind him, eyeing Jack hungrily. "Prepare him." 

"Daniel," Jack repeated hopelessly.

"What was your mission here?" Ba'al asked for the nth time, his voice weary.

"Daniel." Jack groaned, staring at the ceiling to avoid looking at Ba'al.

"Why did the Tok'ra send you?" Ba'al growled, holding his vial of acid at ready. When Jack didn't respond he let a drop hit him in the chest, it was Jack's second experience with the acid and he could feel it slowly eating past his skin, near the fresh new skin the sarcophagus had replaced from last time. He groaned, closing his eyes, and tried to create a delusion to avoid thinking about the Jaffa that was now standing on the perimeter of the gravity field, mentally undressing him.

Something clicked in a panel built into the table in front of Ba'al as he delicately pressed keys and the gravity around Jack suddenly returned to planetary normal, dropping him painfully on the hard floor. He scrabbled at the tiles, but the pain where the acid was eating through his chest blinded him, even as it shifted direction with the change in gravity. The Jaffa grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, yanking it over his head and using it as crude hand restraints, wrapping it around his wrists and forcing Jack to remember what he had done to Jonas. It had only been days, but it felt like a lifetime ago that he'd had Daniel's blond protege pinned beneath him on a cot at Cheyenne Mountain.

Jack blacked out, he didn't remember his pants having been removed, one moment the Jaffa was lifting him up, and the next Ba'al was right in his face and Jack was painfully aware of the chilled air in the torture chamber on his naked cock and his knees aching with their usual pains on the tiled floor. The Jaffa, doing his part, still held Jack up by the makeshift restraints, one foot keeping his knees spread from behind. When Ba'al brought his face close to Jack's his hot breath washed over Jack's face, filling his nostrils with Ba'al's scent. "This could have been easier, but I've grown bored of your denials. It's time for me to have some entertainment." Ba'al purred into Jack's face and reached to his bare chest, digging the tip of his index finger into the hole left by the acid, eliciting a hoarse scream from Jack as the pain he was growing used to suddenly erupted into unbearable agony.

All Jack could think about was an all-encompassing wish that Daniel would have a change of heart, that Daniel would let him die here. He had to be watching, there was no way Daniel's peculiar morals would let him force Jack to go through this by himself. 

"Daniel--" Jack ground out as Ba'al ran one clawed hand down his chest, his nails digging long furrows in Jack's flesh until his hand gripped Jack's flaccid cock tightly. "--Kill me. Let me die. Let me die. Let me die."

\---

Daniel wasn't watching. It wasn't that he couldn't stand watching Jack being tortured, it was that he was still trying to find a way to stop it. He knew what Ba'al was going to do to Jack next, he had read it in Ba'al's eyes, and maybe some vindictive part of him was letting it happen. He would never admit to it, and he didn't want to actually watch the act accomplished. But if he thought about it, he knew he was still hurt by Jack's actions, by Jonas' actions, and by the knowledge that at that particular point they both knew that Daniel had loved Jack completely. 

He hated himself a little bit. Scratch that, he hated himself a lot. He was practiced in the art of self-loathing, he had developed the talent over his entire life, beginning under the careful tutelage of foster parents. And so when he caught himself having vindictive thoughts towards Jack, Jack the man who was still the love of his life despite his current form, Daniel easily fell into a pattern of self-loathing. He took this feeling to Cheyenne Mountain, more than a little worried that if the whole SGC showed no signs of solving the puzzle of Jack's disappearance, as on his previous visit, that he would be forced to intervene. Damn the consequences. 

He was relieved, however, to see that Sam and Teal'c had solved the problem. They were preparing to leave for Ba'al's fortress when he arrived. Daniel moved through, invisible to everyone around him, and carefully watched the preparations, noting nothing that would lead him to believe that their mission would be anything but successful.

\---

Jack's jaw was broken. It had happened suddenly when the Jaffa holding him up had reached down and gripped his chin tightly to force his mouth open. He had grabbed the bone too hard, and Jack's lower jaw bone cracked under the pressure. He could feel blood pooling in his mouth, running down his throat as Ba'al's cock slammed in and out of his throat like a piston. They were keeping him alive much longer than any previous torture session, and Jack continued to fade in and out of consciousness, no longer able to verbally ask Daniel to grant his wish, but still frantically repeating the thought over and over in his head. _Let me die, let me die, let me die._

Ba'al came, spurting white semen onto Jack's face, and it ran pink as it mixed with blood down his chin. "I'm going to keep you around here for a long time."

Jack tried to spit on Ba'al's polished shoes, but he lacked the strength to form suction in his mouth. Saliva, semen, and blood dribbled from his mouth and onto the ground in front of Ba'al as Jack struggled against the Jaffa's grasp to lean forward. "Fuck you, shithead." Jack tried to say, but the words were too garbled even for him to understand.

Ba'al laughed. "I like this one. He's got spirit, it will be fun to break it." He leaned down so that his hot breath washed over Jack's aching face. "I don't know who Daniel is, but you should be begging me for death. You will soon."

Jack could see that his pupils were dilated and he had a crazed look in his eyes. Once Ba'al had realized there was no information that Jack could give him he had been downgraded from person of interest to plaything, this much was becoming clear. The torture sessions were no longer meant to provide him with intel, only pleasure, and so they were becoming harder and more erratic. Surely eventually Daniel would concede to his request?

\---

Daniel had arrived back at the compound in time to see Jack's jaw crack in the burly Jaffa's thick hand. He winced as Jack blacked out, coming to only when Ba'al had thrust his prick into the crushed and bruised opening. It tore Daniel's heart down the middle when he realized the words that Jack was still trying to say, though he could no longer form them coherently, were "Daniel let me die."

"Just make it through, this might be the last time. You can do it, Jack. You're strong. You're the strongest person I've ever seen, on this plane or the next." Daniel started whispering, though no one in the room could hear him.

Jack died while Daniel watched, choking on his own spit and blood as it filled his lungs. Ba'al laughed softly, his voice a sultry growl, as he kicked Jack in the ribs several times to ensure his death.

"Revive him, return him to his chamber, and I will call for him when I want him again." Ba'al smiled, showing his teeth to the Jaffa.

The Jaffa nodded compliantly and Daniel followed as he carried Jack's prone body to the sarcophagus and laid it down disdainfully. Daniel wanted to reach out and touch Jack, he wanted to feel his skin under his fingers, hold his face in his hands, hold him in his arms and comfort him. In death Jack did not look peaceful, though his face had relaxed it only accentuated the damage Ba'al had done. Daniel watched silently as the Jaffa lowered the lid to the sarcophagus and hoped fervently that this would be the last time Jack found himself inside of one. Daniel felt the same shame he had felt earlier, for even for a second wishing anything like this on Jack. It was love that brought Jack here, along with Kanan, to rescue Shellan. It was love and Jack O'Neill's firm belief to never leave anyone behind. Jack was here because he was a good person, through and through. Daniel wished him ill because he was a terrible person, because no matter what Oma saw in him, he was still a human being inside, and he had all of the disgusting base habits and beliefs that seem to invade human brains. Daniel could barely control the upwelling of self-doubt and self-loathing that washed over him.

\---

When Jack came to he was back in his cell. He could feel the fresh new skin, brand new bones, and all of the repairs that the sarcophagus had conducted on his body. He was wearing his clothes again, and he touched his shirt lightly, feeling all of the tears and holes that it had gathered. It was at this moment that he realized Daniel was sitting quietly on the bench watching him, a look of sympathy on his face. Jack glared, Daniel was here, Daniel looked sad, which could only mean he had seen what Jack had gone through and done nothing to stop it.

"Daniel?" He asked.

"I'm here." Daniel replied softly.

"Daniel, you have to end this." Jack begged desperately, there was no way he could handle another session with Ba'al.

Daniel sighed, but he didn't move to touch Jack or comfort him in any way. "Jack, you just have to hang in there a little while longer."

"No." Jack demanded, his heart starting to race. "I can't go back in there. If I go back, I swear to god, I'll give Ba'al what he wants." He choked on his words slightly. "I'll tell him."

"What?" Daniel asked incredulously.

"That he loved her." Jack whispered.

Daniel looked perplexed. "Kanan?"

"He came back for her." Jack said, thinking of Shellan's pretty face looking down at him from outside of his cell. "He wanted to save her."

"Ba'al doesn't know this." Daniel stated, he didn't ask.

"If he finds out, he'll do to her what he's doing to me." Jack thought about everything Ba'al had done, and imagined that he'd somehow find a way to make it worse for Shellan. "If you don't end this--I'll tell him."

"You won't have to. It's almost over Jack." Daniel said simply, his voice quiet and soft.

Jack felt like he was having an out-of-body experience as Daniel explained that Teal'c and Sam were on their way. It was as though his real self was watching the exchange from a distance, unable to comprehend the news. He had given up on rescue. He had given up days before, the thought that he could be rescued didn't ever enter even his darkest fantasies.

"This is it." Daniel said as the gravity in the cell began to shift slowly. "All you ever wanted was a fighting chance, Jack, now you have it. If anyone can make it out of here, you can."

Jack crouched against the wall as it slowly became the floor. Daniel wasn't there anymore, but he didn't really care. He ran into the hallway and the first person he saw was the Jaffa that had broken his jaw, his back was to Jack as he walked through the corridor briskly, everyone in the base was no doubt massing towards Ba'al to protect him. He ran up behind the Jaffa, using all of his black ops training to be completely silent until the moment he dove on the Jaffa from behind, gripping his head in both hands and slamming it into the stone floor repeatedly. It was not until several blows after the Jaffa had gone still that Jack managed to calm himself enough to grab the Jaffa's zat and continue moving through the building. Twenty feet past the first Jaffa he zatted two more as they noticed him, running quickly but efficiently through the hallways. He personally hoped that he'd run into Ba'al before he had collected enough Jaffa to protect him, or before he managed to desert the compound entirely. Jack had a vengeful personality, he would never deny this fact about himself. Though usually someone was there to say "Jack, that's enough."

He found Shellan in a cell of her own. "Come with me!" Jack demanded, grabbed her diminutive hand.

"No, he'll stop us!" She shook her head, she was frantic. Perhaps Ba'al had already begun torturing her, perhaps we was already suspicious of her allegiance.

"Come on." Jack had to forcibly drag her out, pulling her through the mostly empty hallways.

They ran into Teal'c so suddenly Jack had nearly zatted him in the chest before catching himself.

"O'neill." Teal'c nodded, betraying a small smile of relief. "Are you well?"

"Well enough, Teal'c. This is Shellan. She's one of Ba'al's slaves. That's why that snake took me here." Jack nodded firmly to Teal'c, leading him away from the direction Jack had come. He didn't want anyone to find the first Jaffa. He didn't want anyone to ask what had driven him to grinding his brains into the stone floor, and he didn't want that question to lead anyone to ask for details about his torture.

\---

Daniel watched the rescue of Jack and Shallan from a distance, no longer visible to Jack or any of the members of SG-1. He made it, Jack O'Neill would live to fight another day. Daniel wouldn't be forced to help him die, and he no longer had to fight him to ascend either.

With a strange feeling of loss, Daniel retreated to the outer reaches of the atmosphere of Ba'al's planet. He could see a large ship leaving the planet on the other side of the compound as the SGC and Tok'ra ships, of Goa'uld make. Ba'al was escaping, and from everything Daniel had learned he could readily guess that Ba'al was not the type of Goa'uld to take any humiliation lightly. They would have to watch out for him, it was likely that he was going to become a significant enemy of Earth and the SGC. He stayed just beyond the atmosphere until the SGC ships began leaving the planet, he followed them to Earth, reluctant to leave Jack's side for the time being.

At Cheyenne Mountain he watched as Janet gave Jack a full examination. No signs of his torture sessions from Ba'al remained, courtesy of the sarcophagus, and Daniel could tell that Jack wasn't planning on divulging more information that necessary concerning them. Jack, in fact, was healthier than he had been when he had left, though Janet was disinclined to let him leave the infirmary right away. It wasn't until Sam, Teal'c, and several others from the SGC had been in to visit Jack that he was finally alone, preparing for sleep.

"I always seem to be saying goodbye to you." Daniel whispered, and he found that he had never wanted more to stay on Earth, to descend and become human again.

"Yeah, I noticed that." Jack watched him keenly. "Why don't you stick around for awhile?"

"I can't, really." Daniel could hear a quiver in his own voice.

"You just did." Jack argued, and Daniel thought for a moment he could almost hear the love that Jonas had picked up on so quickly in Jack's voice.

"Special occasion." Daniel shrugged.

"Christmas?" Jack asked hopefully.

Daniel narrowed his eyes, _he wished_. "No."

"Groundhog Day?" Jack asked again, a slight smile playing on his lips.

"Nooooo." Daniel tried not to smile back at him.

Jack sighed, clearly sad that he hadn't engaged Daniel in his lighthearted banter. "I've got my journey, you've got yours?"

"Something like that, yeah." Daniel sighed and looked at the ground for a moment, studying the familiar infirmary tiles, before returning his gaze to Jack. "Look, I know you don't think so--right now, I mean I know you have your doubts, but, uh, because you've been through something that no one should go through. I guess what I'm trying to say is--you're gonna be alright."

"How do you know?" Jack asked, and it killed Daniel that he did.

"You're just gonna have to trust me." Daniel lied. He wanted to desperately to plant a seed of hope within Jack, to prevent him from succumbing to depression and self-loathing after his experience at the hands of Ba'al.

After a moment Jack smiled. "I can do that."

Daniel smiled back. He nodded at Jack, maintaining eye contact. 

Jack watched him for a moment. "You gonna be okay?" He sounded genuinely concerned.

"Yeah." Daniel replied, hoping to sound confident. "I'm gonna be fine."

\---

Carter burst into the room with a cup of water and Jack immediately felt Daniel's absence down to his bones. He tried not to look forlorn as he thanked her and she left. Daniel didn't come back.

"Thanks." Jack said softly, looking up and wondering if Daniel was still around, just invisible to him.

As he leaned back in the infirmary bed, Jack couldn't help humming the Elton John song that had been causing him so much trouble recently. "Daniel my brother you are older than me, do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal? Your eyes have died, but you see more than I. Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky."

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter one notes:
> 
> Each chapter has a sort of theme song in this piece. This chapter's song is Dangerous by Fairport Convention.


End file.
